


Midwestern Snowstorm in the Key of E

by murderofonerose (atmilliways)



Category: Metalocalypse (Cartoon)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Nathan can't handle the cold, Pre-Canon, Sharing a Bed, Skwisgaar can find GMILFs even in a blizzard, Snowed In
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-17 18:55:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29476581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atmilliways/pseuds/murderofonerose
Summary: Winter, Nathan is fairly sure, is more brutal than death. . . . It had never been this bad in Florida. There is fucking snow on the ground, feet of it, still sticking from that blizzard a few days ago.
Relationships: Nathan Explosion/Pickles the Drummer
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11





	Midwestern Snowstorm in the Key of E

**Author's Note:**

> **Nickles Week Day 2 - Winter or Summer!**
> 
> **One is from Wisconsin where it’s cold as shit, and one is from Florida where it’s humid as balls. Can love bloom through opposites?**

Winter, Nathan is fairly sure, is more brutal than death. After all, you have to be fucking alive for it, right? It had never been this bad in Florida. There is fucking _snow_ on the ground, _feet_ of it, still sticking from that blizzard a few days ago. 

The same blizzard that’s delayed their very first cross-country tour by at least a week, by the looks of it, and here they are stuck in bumfuck nowhere in the Midwest. Some day, their manager has assured them, they will have a backup plan in place for problems like unplowed, impassable roads. Nathan’s pretty sure he heard Offdensen mention helicopters, but it will probably only be cool once it actually happens or they forget whose idea it originally was, whichever comes first. 

At the moment, they have the run of a short-let three bedroom two bath apartment. It’s nicer than where they actually live, and on the label’s dime, even. Apparently the “Breakout New Metal Band is Snowed In By Record Storm” is really adding to their hype and helping both to sell and drive up the price of the remaining tickets for their future, slightly delayed shows, so all the guys in suits are feeling pretty generous. 

Offdensen has also said that they should take it easy on booze and shit because the plows might get through any day now, but fuck that. The apartment might have double-paned windows but it’s still too fucking cold to be sober. 

“Here ams the booze,” Skwisgaar announces, stomping inside with homemade snowshoes (tennis rackets and several layers of disposable plastic plates, duct taped to his boots). He shrugs the duffel bag he’s wearing, straps over his shoulders like a backpack, onto the floor with a heavy thud and clinks of glass and plastic. “You dildos does to gives me tips whats for goes out-to-sides of them elements outs there for deliveries, or whats?” he asks, already stripping off the snow-crusted parka to get back down to his usual white shirt no-shits-given-about-the-cold state. 

“Yeah, here’sch a tip for you,” Murderface crows as Pickles and Magnus all but pounce on the bag. “‘Don’t eat yellow schnow!’ Ha, there you go, Missch Schweden USchA, schome good ol’ claschic American wischdom!”

“Shut up, Willie,” Magnus tells him flatly, tossing a bottle his way with a roll of his eyes. The older guitarist just sounds bored and tired of bullshit, like usual—not enough of a buzz worked up yet to be particularly cutting. 

(Okay, maybe Offdensen has _some_ point about all the drinking, Nathan thinks grudgingly, but a cranky Magnus is a lot easier to put up with after a few drinks, too, so it balances out.)

“Skwisgaar,” Pickles moans, “there ain’t any cups in here. You were supposed to get cups! How’re we going to make mixed drinks now?!”

“They didn’t haves none reds cups!!”

“Hey, Pickles,” Nathan grunts from his cocoon of blankets on the couch, “toss me something already.” Pickles does so without looking, and he manages to catch it with cold-stiff fingers before it hits him in the face. It’s good tequila though, so he’s willing to forgive the shitty throw. 

God, it’s like Pickles’ dad never taught him what to do with a football in the front yard. Probably because it was always fucking snowing in Wisconsin during football season. Fucker really missed out, how sad. 

“We’ll just drink out of the bottles,” Magnus says. “You know. Like fucking adults.”

“There’sch a funnel in the kitchen,” Murderface volunteers, then goes back to trying to gnaw the plastic ring from the screw cap off his bottle like a maniac. 

Shedding his heavy winter coat in a wet heap by the door, Skwisgaar shoves past the retreating Magnus and the still rummaging Pickles to grab a couple of vodka bottles for himself. “What’s kind of kitchens don’t has cups, just a _tratt_? You guys am don’ts going to gets no ladies ins here that ways!”

“Dood, any lady who doesn’t appreciate a good funnel inn’t much of a woman,” Pickles points out, to vague murmurs of agreement around the room. 

A knock startles all of them except Skwisgaar, who doubles back to the front door. “Oh, ja,” he says offhandedly, “the stores was closings soon so I invites the checkouts ladies over to, you knows . . . hangs out.”

“Checked ‘em out, huh?” Murderface says, snorting in laughter at his own joke. They all ignore him. 

While Skwisgaar lets his guests in, Pickles wanders over with a clinking armful of bottles and perches on the couch arm next to Nathan. “So. . . . You know this means we’re lookin’ at ground zero for an orgy, right?”

“Huh,” Nathan grunts, perking up a little. Some action to go with the booze would actually really help warm him up—

His face falls as the women enter the apartment and creakily start taking off their coats and brush the snow out of their walking sticks and glasses chains. Neither of them look a day under seventy. Off to his right, Murderface does a spit-take and descends into a coughing fit. 

Skwisgaar finishes greeting them with that weird European kisses-on-both-cheeks thing that Nathan has only ever seen him do to girls he’s angling to fuck, then surveys the room coolly. “Where ams all you’s manners, was you drops behinds a wagons? Moves to sides so these lovely ladies has somewheres to’s sit!”

“Yeah, I’m out,” Nathan announces, levering himself and his cloak of many blankets off the couch. He hears the clink-clink of bottles signalling that Pickles is trailing after him, which is fine. The more booze the merrier. They’re sharing a room while they’re snowed into this stupid town, anyway, so it’s not like the guy doesn’t have a right to hide from Skwisgaar’s skanky old ladies in here too. 

Pickles kicks the bedroom door shut behind them and goes to dump his haul of alcohol on his side of the bed. “Gahd, you think you know a guy, huh? _Senior citizens_ , dood. It ain’t right.”

“One of them looked like my grandma,” Nathan admits, feeling a little bit like throwing up in his mouth. He drowns the urge with several large gulps of tequila. “Ugh. I did not need this today.” He stomps around to his side of the bed and slumps onto it. 

“I mean, I’ve had my share of small town droughts on tour, y’know?” Pickles continues. “Hooked up with some real skanks, too. Sometimes both at the same time. But applying the ‘any port in a storm’ rule to old people is jest. . . . weird.”

“Seriously, let’s not talk about it. I don’t want to think about my grandma that way. Ever.” Nathan shudders, which only reminds his body that he’s _fucking freezing_ and has lost the warm spot he’d established on the couch. He starts shivering again, nursing his bottle. “I fucking hate this place.”

Pickles looks up at him blankly, as only a man raised in and used to frigid winters could. “How come?”

“Because it feels like fucking Antartica, you dumbass, and no one knows when we’re going to get out of here,” Nathan growls. 

“Oooh.” The drummer nods with a knowing smirk. “Florida. Right.”

“Shut up.” Scowling, Nathan abandons his bottle on the floor and lays down facing away from Pickles, folding his knees up under his blankets. He really should burrow under the sheets and covers, too, but is too grumpy and cold to want to make the effort, which in turn makes him even more irritated. Stupid tour. Stupid label execs, not getting them a place with a heater big enough to keep the whole place livably warm. 

The bottles clink some more and then clunk down on the bedside table, followed by a sudden dip in the mattress behind him

“Roll over, Florida,” Pickles says with a snicker, tugging at the bedding underneath him. “And lift yer ass for a sec, don’t you know anything about trapping heat?”

Growing up, heat hadn’t been a thing Nathan had ever considered trapping. His focus had always been on getting heat, especially the humid kind, which Florida had in spades, to fuck off. But he grudgingly rolls over and shifts around as instructed, so content with the fact that his bandmate was doing most of the work to get the sheets and bedspread over him that it takes him a moment to realize that Pickles has folded himself into the equation too. The smaller man’s back fits against his chest and he burrows backwards through all the blanket layers like he’s done this sort of thing before. 

By the time shirt meets shirt, Nathan can feel Pickles’ body heat and is mildly annoyed to be so grateful for the extra warmth, but . . . man, he actually feels kind of warm for the first time in a while. 

It’s nice. Kinda gay . . . but nice. 

He doesn’t realize he’s drifting off until he jerks awake some time later. The room is dark now, and the temperature under the covers is positively comfortable. It takes Nathan a drowsy few minutes to realize that Pickles is still pressed close but facing him now, head tucked under the bigger man’s chin and face pressed to the worn black sleeveless shirt. His fists are balled up and arms pinned between their stomachs, like he’s curled up defensively in his sleep; his breath is hot through Nathan’s shirt and every few minutes he mumbles something sharp but unintelligible. That’s what woke Nathan up. 

“Hey,” he grunts, figuring that his bandmate is having some sort of nightmare. They live in such close quarters that he’s noticed it happening before; this is just the first time it’s happened in close enough proximity for Nathan to do anything about it. “Hey, Pickles.”

When this doesn’t get a reaction, he puts a hand on Pickles’ side. Remembering that thing about you’re not supposed to wake sleepwalking people (so maybe that applies to sleep-talking people too? or something?), he shakes him gently. 

“ _Pickles_.”

“Huuuuuh?” Pickles groans. Without opening his eyes, he tries to nuzzle closer. 

The only reason Nathan doesn’t flinch back from this, he tells himself, is because he’s too damn comfortable right where he is. “Pickles, uh . . . wake up.”

Instead of waking, Pickles sighs close-mouthed against his neck, and the sensation of breath tickling over skin makes Nathan shiver in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with temperature. Fuck, what is happening here? 

As soon as he thinks it, Nathan feels Pickles’ leg bump against his. While the frontman still has his heavy boots on (for warmth, or whatever, it had made more sense when he hadn’t been thinking about it), Pickles had obviously kicked his sneakers off before crawling in, because when a leg is slid over Nathan’s that is definitely a sock-foot hanging against the backs of his calves. Pickles is holding onto his shirt now too—a loose, sleepy grip, but still. Another sigh, this time with a hint of a little whine that triggers a very specific physical response that Nathan is both startled and embarrassed by. 

Except he can feel Pickles’ own hard-on pressing against his stomach, so . . . at least it’s not like he’s alone in that? 

Pickles kisses his neck. _Pickles_ is _kissing_ his _neck_. The fucking drummer in his own goddamned band is _giving him a hickey_ , and he cannot for the fucking life of him think of a single thing to do about it. 

“Pickles!” It comes out embarrassingly like a yelp, but there it finally is. And it’s finally loud enough that Pickles starts and leans back from Nathan to make still-sleepy, still-yawning eye contact. 

“Huh?” Pickles asks dumbly, and yawned again. “Nat’en, why’re ya yelling?”

“I, uh. Thought you were having a nightmare.” Nathan feels like his face is on fire because . . . obviously he’d been wrong. He’s also thinking that _shit, this is going to fuck up the band._

Because how can it not? He’s got the afternoon equivalent of morning wood right now, and if he could feel Pickles’ then there’s no way Pickles can’t feel _his_ , and if the drummer gets pissed and fucked off, that’ll be it for Dethklok. Fuck, just when he’d finally kept a group together long enough to actually get signed!

“Oh,” Pickles says blankly. He licks his lips thoughtfully—Nathan can’t help but watch, their faces are still really close together, it’s _right there_ —and offers a lopsided smile. “Well, uh, nope, it was the other thing. But, heh . . . yer warm, right?”

Nathan just stares at him for a minute. An actual, full, sixty-second minute. He has seen Pickles take stage dives for big tits and short skirts, and never once seen him go after a guy. Of course, they’d only known each other for a year and a half . . . and he’d heard some things about Pickles’ glam rock days, but mostly from Magnus, who in himself wasn’t necessarily a trustworthy source. . . . 

“Uhhhhhh. . . . Yeah, I guess I am. Warm.”

“Ya want more tequila?”

That’s certainly a question. He does, but he doesn’t want to have to move, and he knows from experience that drinking while lying down usually just makes the bed soggy more than anything else. Except . . . shouldn’t he want to move? To get away from the boner that’s _still_ hard against his stomach? It’s just sitting there against his stomach like a brand and making him feel uneasy, like his stomach is doing somersaults. Suddenly he’s way too aware of his own breathing—is it too fast? Too slow? Uneven? _Too_ even?

Nathan blinks, remembers he hasn’t answered the question yet, and grimaces. “I don’t know. I guess not.”

Pickles gives a little grunt of acknowledgement and reaches up to pat Nathan’s cheek while yawning again. It’s something he’s done before, but, like . . . not while laying down together. Usually just in passing, a little open palmed _tap-tap_ because they’re buddies. Casual. 

It does not feel casual right now. Not while Pickle’s other hand still has a loose handful of Nathan’s shirt and his spit is drying on Nathan’s neck. 

“Ha,” Pickles chuckles through the end of the yawn. “That was a good nap. I feel all . . . refreshed, y’know?”

. . . Is Pickles not even going to say _anything_ about what’s happening? Fuck, this is torture. This is actual torture, and Nathan is going to die. He’s going to die of awkwardness while trying to ignore the fact that his own boner is still just as present as Pickles’, and this is all just a whole big steaming load of confusion that he doesn’t in any way want. 

“Kinda wanna just chill for the rest of the day,” Pickles continues, looking weirdly almost cross-eyed. What’s up with that? “It’s really nice’n . . . toasty in here.”

That’s then Nathan realizes that Pickles is playing with his hair, twirling it around one finger. And _that’s_ when he realizes that Pickles is cross-eyed because he’s staring at his mouth. Is he thinking about kissing him? At this point, Nathan almost wishes he would, and put an end to this weird purgatory. Not that he knows what he’ll do if they do end up kissing, but. . . .

Pickles shifts his hips, leg still thrown over Nathan’s, and that’s really not fucking fair because Nathan hadn’t been expecting it and the shock feels like a wildfire in his blood, weird anxious anticipation twisting in his gut—or is it arousal? He doesn’t know anymore, just breathes in sharply and his mouth falls open, and that seems to be the opening his bandmate was waiting for. 

It’s not just the kiss, which tastes like vodka, weed, cigarettes, and sleep. It’s that leg tightening and crashing their lower bodies together, even as the hand playing with his hair becomes an entire arm thrown around his neck. Pickles is half off the fucking bed he’s lept against him so hard, and god, Nathan doesn’t hate it. Muscle memory kicks in; he follows the motion to its logical conclusion and rolls onto his back, spreading his legs enough to get the satisfaction of a thigh to provide some friction, because Pickles is grinding against him and hell, fair’s fair. 

Luckily he isn’t as close to the edge as he’d thought, because they don’t fall off (although he can feel the mattress edge at his shoulder). The blankets don’t even fall off, which is equal parts good and frustrating. Good because it’s cold out there; bad because there are an awful lot of layers in the way of skin on skin contact, which suddenly seems desperately important. Nathan is simultaneously not drunk enough for this and weirdly high off the revelation of it all as he discovers that his drummer’s ass is firm and supple. That the harder he squeezes it the harder Pickles ruts against him. If this was some chick Nathan would be urging her to slide down and suck him off already, put that talented mouth and that tongue piercing to better use—but this is _Pickles_ , so maybe below-the-belt stuff would make it too weird. 

. . . Sure, as if coming in their jeans like horny fucking teenagers won’t, and that definitely seems to be the direction this is heading, but fuck it. Whatever. Pickles started it, and everyone knows it’s not really gay as long as the penises don’t touch. 

So Nathan gets lost in it, and he’s not sure how much time passes before Pickles is shuddering on top of him, cramming a hand desperately below the waistband of Nathan’s jeans and underwear. There’s not much room to do much while he’s in there, but it seems as though all the drummer needs to tip over the edge is a hot, throbbing dick in his hand—his cry is muffled by Nathan’s mouth, which is just as well. For Nathan’s part, the hand grasping his dick and Pickles trailing off into a moan against his lips does the trick beautifully, and _fuck_. 

“Fuck,” Pickles unwittingly echoes into Nathan’s cheek with a breathless laugh. “Wow, that was some great E. Wasn’t it?”

In the post-orgasm haze in his head, it occurs to Nathan that Pickles is kind of a dick for forgetting that he forgot to share drugs. Pickles is always holding, it’s like the law of gravity or whatever, of _course_ he’s always got drugs—if Nathan had known that was an option he would’ve asked for some, and this probably would’ve happened anyway, only cranked up to one hundred. 

But it’s a lot less embarrassing to do gay stuff with your loaded bandmate while running on E and half a bottle of tequila than on just the tequila alone, so Nathan grunts, “Yeah. Great. Thanks.”

He’ll figure out how he feels about this later—either that, or drink until he forgets it. Whichever. For now, he needs a nap, and Pickles is already dozing off on top of him anyway, so Nathan just . . . lays back, ignoring the gross mess that is the inside of his briefs right now, and enjoys the warmth.


End file.
